Public Act 93-0445
SB1360 Enrolled LRB093 06075 NHT 06178 b
AN ACT relating to educational labor relations.
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
represented in the General Assembly:
Section 5. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act
is amended by changing Section 7 as follows:
(115 ILCS 5/7) (from Ch. 48, par. 1707)
Sec. 7. Recognition of exclusive bargaining
representatives - unit determination. The Board is empowered
to administer the recognition of bargaining representatives
of employees of public school districts, including employees
of districts which have entered into joint agreements, or
employees of public community college districts, or any State
college or university, and any State agency whose major
function is providing educational services, making certain
that each bargaining unit contains employees with an
identifiable community of interest and that no unit includes
both professional employees and nonprofessional employees
unless a majority of employees in each group vote for
inclusion in the unit.
(a) In determining the appropriateness of a unit, the
Board shall decide in each case, in order to ensure employees
the fullest freedom in exercising the rights guaranteed by
this Act, the unit appropriate for the purpose of collective
bargaining, based upon but not limited to such factors as
historical pattern of recognition, community of interest,
including employee skills and functions, degree of functional
integration, interchangeability and contact among employees,
common supervision, wages, hours and other working conditions
of the employees involved, and the desires of the employees.
Nothing in this Act, except as herein provided, shall
interfere with or negate the current representation rights or
patterns and practices of employee organizations which have
historically represented employees for the purposes of
collective bargaining, including but not limited to the
negotiations of wages, hours and working conditions,
resolutions of employees' grievances, or resolution of
jurisdictional disputes, or the establishment and maintenance
of prevailing wage rates, unless a majority of the employees
so represented expresses a contrary desire under the
procedures set forth in this Act. This Section, however,
does not prohibit multi-unit bargaining. Notwithstanding the
above factors, where the majority of public employees of a
craft so decide, the Board shall designate such craft as a
unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining.
The sole appropriate bargaining unit for tenured and
tenure-track academic faculty at each campus of the
University of Illinois shall be a unit that is comprised of
non-supervisory academic faculty employed more than half-time
and that includes all tenured and, tenure-track, and
nontenure-track faculty of that University campus employed by
the board of trustees of that University in all of the
campus's its undergraduate, graduate, and professional
schools and degree and non-degree programs (with the
exception of the college of medicine, the college of
pharmacy, the college of dentistry, the college of law, and
the college of veterinary medicine, each of which shall have
its own separate unit), regardless of current or historical
representation rights or patterns or the application of any
other factors. Any decision, rule, or regulation, promulgated
by the Board to the contrary shall be null and void.
(b) An educational employer may voluntarily recognize a
labor organization for collective bargaining purposes if that
organization appears to represent a majority of employees in
the unit. The employer shall post notice of its intent to so
recognize for a period of at least 20 school days on bulletin
boards or other places used or reserved for employee notices.
Thereafter, the employer, if satisfied as to the majority
status of the employee organization, shall send written
notification of such recognition to the Board for
certification.
Within the 20 day notice period, however, any other
interested employee organization may petition the Board to
seek recognition as the exclusive representative of the unit
in the manner specified by rules and regulations prescribed
by the Board, if such interested employee organization has
been designated by at least 15% of the employees in an
appropriate bargaining unit which includes all or some of the
employees in the unit intended to be recognized by the
employer. In such event, the Board shall proceed with the
petition in the same manner as provided in paragraph (c) of
this Section.
(c) A labor organization may also gain recognition as
the exclusive representative by an election of the employees
in the unit. Petitions requesting an election may be filed
with the Board:
(1) by an employee or group of employees or any
labor organizations acting on their behalf alleging and
presenting evidence that 30% or more of the employees in
a bargaining unit wish to be represented for collective
bargaining or that the labor organization which has been
acting as the exclusive bargaining representative is no
longer representative of a majority of the employees in
the unit; or
(2) by an employer alleging that one or more labor
organizations have presented a claim to be recognized as
an exclusive bargaining representative of a majority of
the employees in an appropriate unit and that it doubts
the majority status of any of the organizations or that
it doubts the majority status of an exclusive bargaining
representative.
The Board shall investigate the petition and if it has
reasonable cause to suspect that a question of representation
exists, it shall give notice and conduct a hearing. If it
finds upon the record of the hearing that a question of
representation exists, it shall direct an election, which
shall be held no later than 90 days after the date the
petition was filed. Nothing prohibits the waiving of
hearings by the parties and the conduct of consent elections.
(d) An order of the Board dismissing a representation
petition, determining and certifying that a labor
organization has been fairly and freely chosen by a majority
of employees in an appropriate bargaining unit, determining
and certifying that a labor organization has not been fairly
and freely chosen by a majority of employees in the
bargaining unit or certifying a labor organization as the
exclusive representative of employees in an appropriate
bargaining unit because of a determination by the Board that
the labor organization is the historical bargaining
representative of employees in the bargaining unit, is a
final order. Any person aggrieved by any such order issued
on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of 1987
may apply for and obtain judicial review in accordance with
provisions of the Administrative Review Law, as now or
hereafter amended, except that such review shall be afforded
directly in the Appellate Court of a judicial district in
which the Board maintains an office. Any direct appeal to the
Appellate Court shall be filed within 35 days from the date
that a copy of the decision sought to be reviewed was served
upon the party affected by the decision.
No election may be conducted in any bargaining unit
during the term of a collective bargaining agreement covering
such unit or subdivision thereof, except the Board may direct
an election after the filing of a petition between January 15
and March 1 of the final year of a collective bargaining
agreement. Nothing in this Section prohibits the negotiation
of a collective bargaining agreement covering a period not
exceeding 3 years. A collective bargaining agreement of less
than 3 years may be extended up to 3 years by the parties if
the extension is agreed to in writing before the filing of a
petition under this Section. In such case, the final year of
the extension is the final year of the collective bargaining
agreement. No election may be conducted in a bargaining
unit, or subdivision thereof, in which a valid election has
been held within the preceding 12 month period.
(Source: P.A. 88-1; 89-4, eff. 7-1-95 (eff. date changed from
1-1-96 by P.A. 89-24).)